"OOO" 2005 Obituary

OOO o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-08-08 published
John GOVEDAS, 55: A force of nature with 88 keys
John GOVEDAS brightened up choir rehearsals
Pianist also brilliant composer and arranger
By Catherine
DUNPHY,
ObituaryWriter
They are an unheralded lot, these accompanists in school gyms
or drafty church basements hunched in balled sweaters over pianos
that may or may not be in tune, playing for bored and/or restless
choristers who may or may not be in time or on the same note.
Then there was John
GOVEDAS.
A big man, a nutty professor of a guy, he would burst into rehearsals,
streaming sheet music behind him -- and everything, including
the choir he was about to accompany, was brighter.
"Behind your back he would be winding the kids up," said Margaret
STANFIELD, the renowned and recently retired music director at
Howard Jr. Public School. "He would make faces behind the conductor's
back. He could be a distraction."
Before every school practice, the kids would crowd around
GOVEDAS
at the piano, giggling at the buck teeth and horns he added to
the pictures he'd taken of them with his new digital camera.
Then there was the fake hand that appeared at Halloween.
Indeed the clown who could break into The Simpsons theme song
to crack up a choir hid the artist, the lyrical pianist, the
composer, the arranger with the uncompromising standards and
the need to hone musical expression to those same standards,
to an always higher level.
"Either you could work with John or you couldn't. He was intimidating.
He could wreak havoc at a rehearsal if he sensed you weren't
strong or confident," said Shelagh
COHEN, who could and did work
with GOVEDAS for years, even after she left conducting in schools
to work in administration for the Toronto public board's music
department.
GOVEDAS went on to do all the accompanying work for the board.
"(His) piano was never relegated to a supporting role but was
an integral part of the song,"
STANFIELD said in her eulogy to
GOVEDAS, who died May 11. He was 55.
She was another music teacher/choir director who faced down
GOVEDAS
and won his Friendship. "I inherited him," she said when she
went to Glen Ames school to teach. "I was told I should keep
him, that he was brilliant. And that's what he was: brilliant."
The two worked together for 20 years, 16 of them at Howard school,
talking over repertoire and interpretation and producing a long
run of award-winning choirs from there.
GOVEDAS used to attack the piano,
STANFIELD said. "He grunted,
he groaned and sweated, as his page turners knew. He was a force
of nature at the piano."
GOVEDAS accompanied school choirs all over town; among them those
at John Wanless, Glen Ames, John Ross Robertson, Maurice Cody,
Earl Haig and Gledhill schools. He accompanied adult singers
as well in the High Park community choir, the Riverdale Youth
Singers and the Milton Choristers. For a time he led a girls'
choir in Hamilton and for 35 years he was choir director at his
own church.
In his music-strewn apartment in High Park, he arranged and composed
music on his electric piano. He wrote "I am the Song," a favourite
with many of his school choirs. His 1996 version of "I'se the
B'y" has been performed by choirs in Iceland and Australia as
well as Newfoundland.
COHEN said she had to fight with
GOVEDAS to show her that arrangement
he insisted he'd written it for the high school voice, not that
of an elementary school-aged child. And it was true that
GOVEDAS,
whose music degree from the University of Toronto was in choral
composition, had a gift: he knew how to write for a child's voice,
knew its range, understood that it is tricky for youngsters to
hit a high G on an E or I vowel sound, although somewhat easier
for them to manage it with the more open A, Ah, O or
OOO vowel
sounds. He knew how to make the rhythm fit the text, often frightening
the conductors who knew there would be lots of meter and rhythm
changes.
"The children found his music easy to learn, yet it was not easy
music," said
COHEN. "
His music sat so well with the children's
voice. And they adored his songs."
There were always accolades for his compositions at the annual
Kiwanis music festivals. So
COHEN persevered until her friend
finally brought in a scratchy, scribbled manuscript of "I'se
the B'y." It was the Maurice Cody school choir, under
COHEN,
who first performed the piece.
GOVEDAS had many commissions, writing music for families of all
faiths to mark special occasions, and for both Howard and Northlea
schools, long-time rivals at the Kiwanis festivals.
While music director at one Catholic church -- the Lithuanian
Martyrs in Mississauga -- he was commissioned to write music
for another, the Church of the Holy Resurrection. He once proudly
showed STANFIELD the medal he received from the Lithuanian government
for his contribution to his cultural heritage, and it was at
church, the centre of community life for many Lithuanians, where
he discovered his love of music.
When Lithuanian Martyrs was still located on College Street, it
had a magnificent pipe organ that entranced a 6-year-old
GOVEDAS
waiting while his mother attended choir practice. When he was
10, his parents bought a piano; when he was 12, he was playing
the organ at church; at 16, he got his first paid gig, playing
for a wedding.
His brother Denis can't remember a time when John was not playing
the piano at their home. That focus stayed with him for the rest
of his life. "He was always so busy with his music, always running,"
said Denis.
But when John came to his home for Christmas in 2003, Denis knew
something was wrong when his normally ebullient brother was subdued.
And it was obvious he was in pain when he visited three months
later.
"He kept procrastinating seeing a doctor," said Denis. "For John
there was no other world than music."
By 2004, STANFIELD too was worried about her friend, especially
as the February date for the annual Kiwanis festival neared.
"He wouldn't let go," she said. "We were torn between saying
to him that he must stop, but the feeling was that he would have
given up sooner on life if he had been shut out."
Gaunt and grey-skinned, he was at the piano when Howard's primary
choir, the Grade 3s, sang "Piping Down the Valleys Wild" and
"TheBrownBird Singing," the latter a favourite of
GOVEDAS.
"At the end they had to hold a high F note and they held it beautifully
and I remember thinking I am going to hang onto this a little
longer. It was an exquisite moment and John knew it too," said
STANFIELD. "
When they sang that last perfect note he smiled at
them and nodded."
The choir won the award as best of its class, and
GOVEDAS was
determined to accompany his singers, as well as the choir from
Earl Haig school, at the upcoming Spring Festival, the annual
city-wide concert of school choirs that takes place each May
at Massey Hall.
COHEN had also hired
GOVEDAS for that concert to accompany the
mass choir singing his piece "I am the Song," although by March
she realized he wasn't going to be able to play. Still she sent
the program to the printers with his name on it: "I thought I
can't remove him now since it may dash his hopes and his determination."
But 10 days before the concert,
GOVEDAS was moved into the palliative
care unit at St. Michael's Hospital and
COHEN and
STANFIELD began
talking about having him attend Spring Fest 2005 in a wheelchair.
But when it was time for the concert, May 4,
GOVEDAS was in a
coma and unable to witness
COHEN conduct the choir as they sang
the piece he had written 11 years earlier for that same event.
It was performed just before the intermission and
COHEN had arranged
for the sound engineer to record and make a Compact Disk of the
piece then and there.
"I went beating down Queen St. in all my finery and ran up to
the 4th floor (at St. Mike's) and handed the Compact Disk to
Denis," COHEN recalled. I spoke to John and told him it was
a great show and that he had a lot of applause."
As Denis played the piece,
COHEN said she saw "a little movement"
of John's head, a "little wrinkle" of the brow. "I think he heard
it," Denis said.
STANFIELD has put together a tribute Compact Disk "of all the
songs I could find that were previously recorded and arranged
or written by him." It is called A Tribute to John
GOVEDAS and
Howard school is selling it to raise money for an award in his
name to be presented at future Kiwanis festivals.
And come spring, she will organize a concert to honour the man
for whom the music never stopped.